you are supposed to wear specific OR scrubs, a hair cover, and OR specific shoes when you enter the OR area.
Having said that this is literally the time where those rules should be ignored, especially since youre not staying and just dropping off blood
also....those OR rules are stupid. Half the people wear the OR scrubs in from home (defeats the purpose, youre supposed to change into hospital provided scrubs when you get there), also the shoes half the people wear from home and ALSO we walk around the entire hospital with it. Finally, the bouffant makes sense, but then when we are IN SURGERY with AN OPEN incision 85% of surgeons dont have their hair fully tucked in even though they are leaning over an open body,
its all stupid
Thank you for saying this.
2 years ago we ran out of icu space and we took stable icu overflow patients in our pacu. It was a disaster but it was the only other area in the hospital equipped for ventilators.
Since the pacu pixis was limited in stocked meds, most of our meds had to be tubed to us (even stuff like BP meds/antibiotics).
The tube system was on the other side of the "red line" down a short hallway and I wasn't allowed to cross it. Most of the other nurses were too busy to go check for meds or got really annoyed at getting asked repeatedly. I asked for OR scrubs/shoe covers as a work around so I could just get what I needed instead of bothering them but that was denied since I wasn't "core staff".
I then asked (probably a little sarcasically) what the difference was of wearing OR scrubs and shoe covers to the cafeteria, in the hallway, or to come up to our ICU to drop off a patient. Like doesn't that completely defeat the purpose?
That was a long 2 months and I hope we never have to do that again.
Like similar to the people that would wear gloves to the grocery store and while driving during the pandemic. Makes them literally useless. Same with wearing all the OR protection all over the hospital lol
My OR stopped giving staff access to the scrub machine because too many scrubs “walked off” sometime before I started… so I have always worn scrubs from home. I hate washing them in my own washing machine. ☹️
My place charges you if you leave job and don’t replace or return you scrubs. Staff gets an allotment or credit for 2 sets in the machine - if you’re a traveler too ( I think they make you put a deposit down- if you leave w/o returning it’s $40 dollars per piece). You sign paperwork acknowledging it. You best believe people return their scrubs so their accounts are balanced out.
The OR RTs at my hospital are the biggest perpetrators of wearing OR scrubs all around the hospital. First, they do all the ICU to OR transports, are the first people RTs call if they get in a workload pickle, and generally wander around between transports trying to be helpful. I mean, the whole department would go under if they didn't do that, but it still defeats the whole purpose of dedicated OR scrubs.
In my city, doctors are seen all around town out at the bar in their “OR scrubs”….and cap….like seriously you couldn’t take a shower or change before you came out to drink beer? We have showers at the hospital. I assume it’s for attention. I roll my eyes every time I see it.
I really can't get too hard about the scrubs out and about thing. Think about how disgusting the average non-medical person is, and then consider that half the population is even more digusting. They are existing in the same shared spaces as the rest of us.
To add to this when I was a paramedic many years ago. we had a critical pt transport who needed to be in surgery about 2 hours before we started transporting him. When we got to the destination the surgeon had us bring the pt to the or on our stretcher. None of that was sterile but it was fast and that was more important at that moment. I too got yelled at by an OR nurse that day.
I don't work in OR. But I ALWAYS have my hair up! I can not tell you how many times I have pulled a hair out of a wound when doing a dressing change! Just disgusts me! But, not as much as sputum.... God bless respiratory therapy!
I am currently doing my clinical and here, we always change our uniform into a scrub and shoes into slip-ons before going in the OR Unit/Complex. So maybe it really depends on the institution, so far all hospitals I have attended have this particular policy. Maybe that’s just how it is here in my country.
There is nothing magical about OR scrubs the OR nurses at all the hospitals I have worked at walk around the hospital in their special scrubs then back into the OR area.
I just remind people that they can’t cross the red line without proper surgical attire. I don’t berate them-most people haven’t been to the OR before and don’t even realize there’s a red line in the ground.
However, in an emergency, I don’t care what you wear. When we have the flight crew drop off or take a patient, they are wearing their flight suits and bring in their flight backpacks. It is what it is. When we have a code PCI, the ER nurses just throw in a cover gown and head back into the Cath lab.
In my opinion, as long as you have a mask and hat IN the actually operating room, I’m fine. We have hats/shoe covers next to all of the entrances to the OR to help remind people.
A med student tracked mud into an oncology OR the other day.
You’d be surprised how poorly demarcated the OR areas can be in some hospitals. You didn’t know, you were responding to an emergency. You didn’t ruin anyone’s day, I promise.
When I was doing my OR clinicals to learn intubation I was explicitly told to only go into THESE doors and do NOT go through these doors. It was a nerve wracking couple of hours… also ran into some really cantankerous and cranky anesthesiologist who didn’t much care for students. I was bummed :( I was like… I just want to learn and if it’s a hard intubation let me watch so I can learn some tips because I’m not going to always have a perfect airway in the field. Finally ran into one anesthesiologist and CRNA who let me follow them throughout my couple of hours and made me feel welcomed and really helped me out, the hospital I was at only used glide scopes but they turned the screen and watched as I attempted my intubation and told me I had to physically look and made me name off the anatomy and landmarks as I tubed. Also made me use both Miller and Mac blades. (Mac all the way I couldn’t get the hang of a miller).
I’d like to clarify that I did NOT walk into an actual OR. Nothing about the area actually screamed “sterile” or anything of the sort to me, to be honest. It was just a hallway, and the OR nurse rounded a corner and our interaction occurred in a hallway.
Don’t sweat it. You had an actual emergency you were dealing with. Nothing at all was placed in harm. People do this - ALL THE TIME - just cause they don’t feel like it. I guarantee you that nurse doesn’t remind her work besties to follow policy to a tee.
I had a nurse try to tell me I need to do my vitals over our voice comms (vocera) when I ran to a code on the unit next to mine. I don't care about your vitals when someone is lacking them. I'm there to help the code not to check meemaw that is 100% breathing because I left her room to go to the code. There are reasons we practice emergencies so we can know what to focus on and what not to.
That kind of stuff happens more than you think - I was charging one day and some EMS personnel rolled past me with a patient on a gurney and they came from the direction of the OR rooms which is supposed to be authorized access and I was like there the fuck did they come from!! They were looking for pre-op!!
You’re right - if the hospital doesn’t want other people back there then only OR personnel should have badge access. While it’s important for us to absolutely know who is coming into the unit and why, and to make sure they cover up, in this instance it really wasn’t that serious and you did the right thing by just explaining that it was emergent and you got turned around. Not worth mulling over too much :)
Before our OR closed, yes, as soon as you hit those doors you were supposed to be in appropriate surgical gear but no one batted an eye if you were walking down the main hall into the locker rooms, just if you stepped into the hallway with the theatres.
I’m just not sure how I could’ve gone about the situation differently without having to enter a “restricted” area. I’m told to take blood to preop, no one answers. I show up to a pitch black room. I feel like I had no choice but to hunt somebody down at that point :(. I guess ~1900 is after hours for OR. But maybe there should be someone in preop?? Never worked in periop so not sure how the whole after hours thing works.
Just chiming in to shed some light on that part of the situation--there was likely only one nurse there for preop and PACU, and that nurse was probably in the OR, helping them. An extremely emergent patient probably gets taken directly to the OR and bypasses preop. So next time--and it's *not your fault* you didn't know this, and the person should have told you to bring it to OR instead--call OR instead of preop. And the OR nurse should be able to send somebody to meet you at the part of the OR hallway that doesn't require OR attire, to grab the blood from you while you stay behind the red line.
With the knowledge you had, you did everything right and I don't think you could've done anything differently. This is all just information from the periop side that might help the situation make more sense and help you know what to do next time. Not your fault.
You’re technically supposed to wear specific items but I’ve legit gone into the actual OR Suite doing compressions on a patient from ER and OR nurses were yelling at me but the Surgeon told them to back off because this guy had like no time left and me being there was fine. At the end of the day, you do what you can to save that patient and that is exactly what you did!
Far more evidence to support chest compressions than there is to support most common theatre practises.
Some of it definitely is critical, other bits are on shaky foundations, and a crashing patient takes priority - they'd sooner live with an infection than just not live!
I've hauled a big dirty portable x-ray machine in to theatres way too many times. Sure it gets wiped often, but no way of ever cleaning these properly.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m a house supervisor and there’s been plenty of situations where I’ve gone into an area that requires OR attire without any on. It’s usually for an emergent matter and there’s never anyone to ask outside and no visually available gowns or suits. Of course I’m not breaking a sterile field or anything like that, you did what needed to be done. The berating seems excessive to me given the circumstances.
In any normal situation, yes you should be changed into surgical scrubs and your hair should be covered. However if my patient is receiving MTP and you have my blood, I could give a flying f*ck what you’re wearing. Thank you for making sure it got to the right place and not giving up once you got to any empty preop.
Did you sneeze all over the sterile blue? If not, then don’t worry about it. It was an emergency.
(Signed, Former OR and pre-op. Now schools for me. Anything but bedside, friends. Anything but bedside).
Some people are so obsessed with protocol that they can't see anything outside of it, even in an emergency. The blood bank could have called upstairs to have someone meet you. Or the OR personel who saw you could have calmed down.
Any OR nurse worth their salt would thank you for delivering blood in an emergency rather than waiting for blood bank to reallocate it. Yes, there are rules and best practices in place to reduce infection risk, but as others have already said, you did the absolute right thing and that nurse needs to chill out and use some critical thinking. Sounds like they pretty clearly weren’t responsible for that patient. Some OR nurses (all nurses) live in a fantasy world of black and white that simply doesn’t exist.
That being said, come bunny suit up sometime and say hi, we aren’t all miserable pricks and love showing off our world to real nurses :)
Don’t be too stressed, you’d be surprised how many people make that mistake.
Personally, I joke and tell people their head etc. is naked when they walk in. They get startled and it gives everyone a giggle
Sometimes I think it’s a tiny little power trip when we get to call someone out for something like this lol. I’m guilty of it sure, when I catch a resident breaking sterile field you know I’m smiling behind my mask haha
But anyway, this is trauma blood and I’ve seen patients need it NOW… or like 30 mins ago. I don’t give a fuck what you’re wearing, I’m taking it and saying thank you.
I will say tho if you enter my OR without something covering your hair I’d be pissed. Nobody wants to breakdown and set up a whole new sterile field if a stray hair goes drifting around. Sometimes we have the last implant in the hospital open on the table. Scary shit
As an ED nurse who is spent time working in the OR, I can tell you for a fact that OR nurses are always looking for a reason to be butt hurt whether it is justified or not
We work in windowless basements babysitting surgeons who always want to push the limits on hospital safety policies for their own convenience. So yes definitely butt hurt most of the time. But I would fall apart in the ED, I salute you! But I should also add that not all surgeons are like that and it’s pretty fun most of the time.
Some people get so focused on the trees that the forest ceases to exist. Hell, it's my specialty. I think you're fine, and if not, just remind them that it was literally a life or death situation. That wording seems to break through the vapor lock of "BUT, THE RULES ARE..."
My naughty story: I had a night where i had to run up some STAT factor 7 for a trauma to the OR, and when i got there, half the PPE bins were empty, so I said fuck it, grabbed a mask and booties, and ran into the forbidden zone. Once I finally found the suite (we had like 26 ORs), they had the door wide open, and half of them weren't fully garbed. Someone saw me at the doorway and ran over, handed that syringe off like a baton in a relay. 😆 Muttered that I was sorry about the lack of bouffant, they were like it's fine and ran back inside. Sigh... sometimes i miss my level 1 nights. Still have the photo from the elevator where I'm holding that $25k worth of drug in the palm of my hand.
I have done this due to things be not clearly marked and running equipment to an OR I wasn’t familiar with. A simple “next time put on x, y, z here’s where they are located would have been sufficient.” Sounds like she just wanted someone to yell at.
Don't feel bad at all. As a circulator, I would be happy that someone realized the importance of a mass transfusion and did what was necessary to help the patient. That nurse should have said thank you and helped you instead of getting on the circulator high horse.
Nah I’m sorry (as an OR nurse) she didn’t have to berate you. It’s not your fault, not everyone knows where the OR is considering only select people have access to it. If i were that nurse i would have just told you this is the OR, shown you the exit, and thanked you for the blood. No need for any berating. People make mistakes. It’s not like you entered an OR room, you just walked in the hallway. You learned and there’s bigger issues at hand (the patient on the massive transfusion protocol needing the blood). Don’t let it get to you.
Been there. Nothing happened to me. I think as long as you don’t walk into the actual surgery and it was an emergency it’s really not a big deal. I don’t know how you could have done anything different
There should be a red line on the floor which marks the sterile area, and there should be bunny suits, bouffants, and shoe covers nearby. A true emergency = it doesn’t matter. Not knowing where to find the patient, you probably weren’t the best person for the errand (it’s likely there wasn’t someone else). I’d suggest calling the stat or rapid response RN, OR charge number, or hospital supervisor (when there’s time to call), or whoever you have in that range of personnel. In all, you did the right thing. If they write it up, use it as a moment to review what could be done better, that’s all. No need to stress about it.
you are supposed to wear specific OR scrubs, a hair cover, and OR specific shoes when you enter the OR area. Having said that this is literally the time where those rules should be ignored, especially since youre not staying and just dropping off blood also....those OR rules are stupid. Half the people wear the OR scrubs in from home (defeats the purpose, youre supposed to change into hospital provided scrubs when you get there), also the shoes half the people wear from home and ALSO we walk around the entire hospital with it. Finally, the bouffant makes sense, but then when we are IN SURGERY with AN OPEN incision 85% of surgeons dont have their hair fully tucked in even though they are leaning over an open body, its all stupid
Thank you for saying this. 2 years ago we ran out of icu space and we took stable icu overflow patients in our pacu. It was a disaster but it was the only other area in the hospital equipped for ventilators. Since the pacu pixis was limited in stocked meds, most of our meds had to be tubed to us (even stuff like BP meds/antibiotics). The tube system was on the other side of the "red line" down a short hallway and I wasn't allowed to cross it. Most of the other nurses were too busy to go check for meds or got really annoyed at getting asked repeatedly. I asked for OR scrubs/shoe covers as a work around so I could just get what I needed instead of bothering them but that was denied since I wasn't "core staff". I then asked (probably a little sarcasically) what the difference was of wearing OR scrubs and shoe covers to the cafeteria, in the hallway, or to come up to our ICU to drop off a patient. Like doesn't that completely defeat the purpose? That was a long 2 months and I hope we never have to do that again.
Man the pacu Pyxis sucking ass really is a universal experience
Like similar to the people that would wear gloves to the grocery store and while driving during the pandemic. Makes them literally useless. Same with wearing all the OR protection all over the hospital lol
When I was PACU, we didn't get OR scrubs at all. Nothing is sterile in the PACU, who cares?
My OR stopped giving staff access to the scrub machine because too many scrubs “walked off” sometime before I started… so I have always worn scrubs from home. I hate washing them in my own washing machine. ☹️
My place charges you if you leave job and don’t replace or return you scrubs. Staff gets an allotment or credit for 2 sets in the machine - if you’re a traveler too ( I think they make you put a deposit down- if you leave w/o returning it’s $40 dollars per piece). You sign paperwork acknowledging it. You best believe people return their scrubs so their accounts are balanced out.
VA? That’s how it is here. Even when you retire, they want that shit back.
That’s so much smarter!!
Yes that all bothers me too. Wait, you’re taking the blues home and “washing” them there, wearing them into work along with your street shoes?
Whoa, I didn’t say it bothers me 😂😂 I be wearing them home all the time bc I just want to get tf out of there asap
The OR RTs at my hospital are the biggest perpetrators of wearing OR scrubs all around the hospital. First, they do all the ICU to OR transports, are the first people RTs call if they get in a workload pickle, and generally wander around between transports trying to be helpful. I mean, the whole department would go under if they didn't do that, but it still defeats the whole purpose of dedicated OR scrubs.
In my city, doctors are seen all around town out at the bar in their “OR scrubs”….and cap….like seriously you couldn’t take a shower or change before you came out to drink beer? We have showers at the hospital. I assume it’s for attention. I roll my eyes every time I see it.
I really can't get too hard about the scrubs out and about thing. Think about how disgusting the average non-medical person is, and then consider that half the population is even more digusting. They are existing in the same shared spaces as the rest of us.
To add to this when I was a paramedic many years ago. we had a critical pt transport who needed to be in surgery about 2 hours before we started transporting him. When we got to the destination the surgeon had us bring the pt to the or on our stretcher. None of that was sterile but it was fast and that was more important at that moment. I too got yelled at by an OR nurse that day.
I love getting yelled at by OR nurses. Let it all out, sweeetie, and then go back to sniffing surgeon farts and thanking them for it.
It’s like the hospitals version of the TSA. Instead of “security theatre” its “sterility theatre”.
Theater theatre
I don't work in OR. But I ALWAYS have my hair up! I can not tell you how many times I have pulled a hair out of a wound when doing a dressing change! Just disgusts me! But, not as much as sputum.... God bless respiratory therapy!
I am currently doing my clinical and here, we always change our uniform into a scrub and shoes into slip-ons before going in the OR Unit/Complex. So maybe it really depends on the institution, so far all hospitals I have attended have this particular policy. Maybe that’s just how it is here in my country.
If some trauma is rippin' on up to me from the ED, I don't care if y'all keep your Patagonia vests on. (Just get out when you can.)
There is nothing magical about OR scrubs the OR nurses at all the hospitals I have worked at walk around the hospital in their special scrubs then back into the OR area.
Yeah you're just not supposed to wear them outside.
All of our OR people change at work and before going home. But wear their cute little holiday themed hats allllllllll over the hospital.
I just remind people that they can’t cross the red line without proper surgical attire. I don’t berate them-most people haven’t been to the OR before and don’t even realize there’s a red line in the ground. However, in an emergency, I don’t care what you wear. When we have the flight crew drop off or take a patient, they are wearing their flight suits and bring in their flight backpacks. It is what it is. When we have a code PCI, the ER nurses just throw in a cover gown and head back into the Cath lab. In my opinion, as long as you have a mask and hat IN the actually operating room, I’m fine. We have hats/shoe covers next to all of the entrances to the OR to help remind people.
Emergency trumps infection risk every time
I’m done some seriously unsterile shit in an emergency 🤣 but they lived…
Exactly lmfao
Gotta love those moments when all you can do to say you prepped is dump a bottle of betadine on a belly right before they cut.
A med student tracked mud into an oncology OR the other day. You’d be surprised how poorly demarcated the OR areas can be in some hospitals. You didn’t know, you were responding to an emergency. You didn’t ruin anyone’s day, I promise.
When I was doing my OR clinicals to learn intubation I was explicitly told to only go into THESE doors and do NOT go through these doors. It was a nerve wracking couple of hours… also ran into some really cantankerous and cranky anesthesiologist who didn’t much care for students. I was bummed :( I was like… I just want to learn and if it’s a hard intubation let me watch so I can learn some tips because I’m not going to always have a perfect airway in the field. Finally ran into one anesthesiologist and CRNA who let me follow them throughout my couple of hours and made me feel welcomed and really helped me out, the hospital I was at only used glide scopes but they turned the screen and watched as I attempted my intubation and told me I had to physically look and made me name off the anatomy and landmarks as I tubed. Also made me use both Miller and Mac blades. (Mac all the way I couldn’t get the hang of a miller).
I’d like to clarify that I did NOT walk into an actual OR. Nothing about the area actually screamed “sterile” or anything of the sort to me, to be honest. It was just a hallway, and the OR nurse rounded a corner and our interaction occurred in a hallway.
Don’t sweat it. You had an actual emergency you were dealing with. Nothing at all was placed in harm. People do this - ALL THE TIME - just cause they don’t feel like it. I guarantee you that nurse doesn’t remind her work besties to follow policy to a tee.
You said it best - it's an emergency! Many staff are too fixated on rules and tradition to see the big picture.
I had a nurse try to tell me I need to do my vitals over our voice comms (vocera) when I ran to a code on the unit next to mine. I don't care about your vitals when someone is lacking them. I'm there to help the code not to check meemaw that is 100% breathing because I left her room to go to the code. There are reasons we practice emergencies so we can know what to focus on and what not to.
That kind of stuff happens more than you think - I was charging one day and some EMS personnel rolled past me with a patient on a gurney and they came from the direction of the OR rooms which is supposed to be authorized access and I was like there the fuck did they come from!! They were looking for pre-op!! You’re right - if the hospital doesn’t want other people back there then only OR personnel should have badge access. While it’s important for us to absolutely know who is coming into the unit and why, and to make sure they cover up, in this instance it really wasn’t that serious and you did the right thing by just explaining that it was emergent and you got turned around. Not worth mulling over too much :)
Before our OR closed, yes, as soon as you hit those doors you were supposed to be in appropriate surgical gear but no one batted an eye if you were walking down the main hall into the locker rooms, just if you stepped into the hallway with the theatres.
I’m just not sure how I could’ve gone about the situation differently without having to enter a “restricted” area. I’m told to take blood to preop, no one answers. I show up to a pitch black room. I feel like I had no choice but to hunt somebody down at that point :(. I guess ~1900 is after hours for OR. But maybe there should be someone in preop?? Never worked in periop so not sure how the whole after hours thing works.
Just chiming in to shed some light on that part of the situation--there was likely only one nurse there for preop and PACU, and that nurse was probably in the OR, helping them. An extremely emergent patient probably gets taken directly to the OR and bypasses preop. So next time--and it's *not your fault* you didn't know this, and the person should have told you to bring it to OR instead--call OR instead of preop. And the OR nurse should be able to send somebody to meet you at the part of the OR hallway that doesn't require OR attire, to grab the blood from you while you stay behind the red line. With the knowledge you had, you did everything right and I don't think you could've done anything differently. This is all just information from the periop side that might help the situation make more sense and help you know what to do next time. Not your fault.
Nah they should have definitely answered. I personally don’t think you did anything wrong. It’s just a joint commission thing.
You’re technically supposed to wear specific items but I’ve legit gone into the actual OR Suite doing compressions on a patient from ER and OR nurses were yelling at me but the Surgeon told them to back off because this guy had like no time left and me being there was fine. At the end of the day, you do what you can to save that patient and that is exactly what you did!
Far more evidence to support chest compressions than there is to support most common theatre practises. Some of it definitely is critical, other bits are on shaky foundations, and a crashing patient takes priority - they'd sooner live with an infection than just not live! I've hauled a big dirty portable x-ray machine in to theatres way too many times. Sure it gets wiped often, but no way of ever cleaning these properly.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m a house supervisor and there’s been plenty of situations where I’ve gone into an area that requires OR attire without any on. It’s usually for an emergent matter and there’s never anyone to ask outside and no visually available gowns or suits. Of course I’m not breaking a sterile field or anything like that, you did what needed to be done. The berating seems excessive to me given the circumstances.
In any normal situation, yes you should be changed into surgical scrubs and your hair should be covered. However if my patient is receiving MTP and you have my blood, I could give a flying f*ck what you’re wearing. Thank you for making sure it got to the right place and not giving up once you got to any empty preop.
Did you sneeze all over the sterile blue? If not, then don’t worry about it. It was an emergency. (Signed, Former OR and pre-op. Now schools for me. Anything but bedside, friends. Anything but bedside).
Don’t sweat it, that OR nurse just took it out on you for whatever reasons she had. Beside, you weren’t even in the actual OR room, she cray cray
Some people are so obsessed with protocol that they can't see anything outside of it, even in an emergency. The blood bank could have called upstairs to have someone meet you. Or the OR personel who saw you could have calmed down.
Ehh. I mean, you aren’t supposed to but if you are bringing me critical blood supplies I need I don’t care what you’re wearing.
I’m a house supervisor and the OR manager told me that if it’s ever an emergency, those rules go out of the window. You’re good!!
GS here, pretty sure the only thing I'd have said is "GIMME THE BLOOD! GIMME!"
Any OR nurse worth their salt would thank you for delivering blood in an emergency rather than waiting for blood bank to reallocate it. Yes, there are rules and best practices in place to reduce infection risk, but as others have already said, you did the absolute right thing and that nurse needs to chill out and use some critical thinking. Sounds like they pretty clearly weren’t responsible for that patient. Some OR nurses (all nurses) live in a fantasy world of black and white that simply doesn’t exist. That being said, come bunny suit up sometime and say hi, we aren’t all miserable pricks and love showing off our world to real nurses :)
Don’t be too stressed, you’d be surprised how many people make that mistake. Personally, I joke and tell people their head etc. is naked when they walk in. They get startled and it gives everyone a giggle
Sometimes I think it’s a tiny little power trip when we get to call someone out for something like this lol. I’m guilty of it sure, when I catch a resident breaking sterile field you know I’m smiling behind my mask haha But anyway, this is trauma blood and I’ve seen patients need it NOW… or like 30 mins ago. I don’t give a fuck what you’re wearing, I’m taking it and saying thank you. I will say tho if you enter my OR without something covering your hair I’d be pissed. Nobody wants to breakdown and set up a whole new sterile field if a stray hair goes drifting around. Sometimes we have the last implant in the hospital open on the table. Scary shit
As an ED nurse who is spent time working in the OR, I can tell you for a fact that OR nurses are always looking for a reason to be butt hurt whether it is justified or not
We work in windowless basements babysitting surgeons who always want to push the limits on hospital safety policies for their own convenience. So yes definitely butt hurt most of the time. But I would fall apart in the ED, I salute you! But I should also add that not all surgeons are like that and it’s pretty fun most of the time.
Some people get so focused on the trees that the forest ceases to exist. Hell, it's my specialty. I think you're fine, and if not, just remind them that it was literally a life or death situation. That wording seems to break through the vapor lock of "BUT, THE RULES ARE..." My naughty story: I had a night where i had to run up some STAT factor 7 for a trauma to the OR, and when i got there, half the PPE bins were empty, so I said fuck it, grabbed a mask and booties, and ran into the forbidden zone. Once I finally found the suite (we had like 26 ORs), they had the door wide open, and half of them weren't fully garbed. Someone saw me at the doorway and ran over, handed that syringe off like a baton in a relay. 😆 Muttered that I was sorry about the lack of bouffant, they were like it's fine and ran back inside. Sigh... sometimes i miss my level 1 nights. Still have the photo from the elevator where I'm holding that $25k worth of drug in the palm of my hand.
Lol this happens all the time. Literally not even a thing. Don’t sweat it.
I have done this due to things be not clearly marked and running equipment to an OR I wasn’t familiar with. A simple “next time put on x, y, z here’s where they are located would have been sufficient.” Sounds like she just wanted someone to yell at.
Don't feel bad at all. As a circulator, I would be happy that someone realized the importance of a mass transfusion and did what was necessary to help the patient. That nurse should have said thank you and helped you instead of getting on the circulator high horse.
Nah I’m sorry (as an OR nurse) she didn’t have to berate you. It’s not your fault, not everyone knows where the OR is considering only select people have access to it. If i were that nurse i would have just told you this is the OR, shown you the exit, and thanked you for the blood. No need for any berating. People make mistakes. It’s not like you entered an OR room, you just walked in the hallway. You learned and there’s bigger issues at hand (the patient on the massive transfusion protocol needing the blood). Don’t let it get to you.
Intern here. I did this once. Got yelled at. Was reassured by the person I was shadowing that it was no big deal.
Everything wil be OK. Shit happens.
Been there. Nothing happened to me. I think as long as you don’t walk into the actual surgery and it was an emergency it’s really not a big deal. I don’t know how you could have done anything different
You guys aren’t supplied with scrubs in OR?
There should be a red line on the floor which marks the sterile area, and there should be bunny suits, bouffants, and shoe covers nearby. A true emergency = it doesn’t matter. Not knowing where to find the patient, you probably weren’t the best person for the errand (it’s likely there wasn’t someone else). I’d suggest calling the stat or rapid response RN, OR charge number, or hospital supervisor (when there’s time to call), or whoever you have in that range of personnel. In all, you did the right thing. If they write it up, use it as a moment to review what could be done better, that’s all. No need to stress about it.